If you don't know this allready, you should be aware, that the aluminium cracking when bend(t)? isn't necessarily the workshops fault. To bend aluminium without cracking, it has to be fairly new, (as in newly manufactured). If it has been stored for a longer period, something happens with it. I don't know the details about it, just that it needs to be "fresh" for bending it...

Excellent work with the bracket, and good looking designing with the bashguard. It looks GREAT

Indeed , already knew that, the problem is that the workshop did not know how to bend the thing.... Not all aluminium crack, it just needs to be bent in a certain way. It also depends on the series that you are using... It is trickier than stainless steel but then again it is much lighter...
There is a minimum radius of bend. If you exceed that, aluminium will crack... It also helps to bend across the draw lines of the aluminium if you know what I mean.
There are many techniques from what I found later, you can heat treat is as you bend it but that depends on which series you are using...
The best answer to my problem was this one:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tbarstow

Looking into 50xx series aluminum, they aren't heat treatable, but are strain hardened by cold working. What is the temper designation? You want to have the designation of 50xx-0 for annealed material.
A quick search with Google gives some minimum bend radius information.
Looks like a 4mm sheet of 5052 has the recommended minimum bend radii for the following tempers:

0 - 1t
H32 - 1.5t
H34 - 2.5t
H36 - 4t
H38 - 5t
t is thickness

Heck... Next time will do better.
Also, I found the hard way that it is better to get one workshop to do the job. In my case someone did the laser cutting and another did the sheet bending. They kept arguing with each other ...

D.

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